Search

This article examines the history of British house magazines from 1945 to 2015. It discusses their content, audience and function within companies. From tools of internal public relations, house ma...

Both business historians and organisation studies scholars study institutional change to understand the interactions between business and society. However, research approaches differ fundamentally, with organisational research focusing on theory-driven explanations, whereas historical research is rather theory-informed. The consequence of such disciplinary orientation is that interdisciplinary conversations rarely occur. For this special issue, we invited submissions that address how historical research can contribute to our understanding of institutional change while demonstrating ‘dual integrity’ in terms of being significant pieces of historical research that provide us with new insights into historiography and at the same time addressing important theoretical concerns.

As a synthesis of organization theory and historiography, the field of organizational history is mature enough to contribute to wider theoretical and historiographical debates and is sufficiently developed for a theoretical consideration of its subject matter. In this introduction to the Special Topic Forum on History and Organization Studies, we take up the question, “What is organizational history?” and consider three distinct arguments that we believe frame the next phase of development for historical work within organization studies. First, we argue that following the “historic turn,” organizational history has developed as a subfield of organization studies that takes seriously the matter of history, promoting historical research as a way to enrich the broad endeavor of organization. Second, if “history matters,” then organization theory needs a theoretical account of the past that goes beyond the mere use of history as a context to test or as an example to illustrate theory. Third, the focus on “history that matters” in the present leads to two important considerations: how organizations can use “rhetorical history” as a strategic resource and the need to engage with historiographically significant subjects that connect organization theory to larger humanistic concerns, such as slavery and racism.

The question of whether and how research quality should be measured, and the consequences of research audits such as the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) – formerly the RAE – are considered in relation to the role of journal ratings such as the Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Quality Guide (the ABS Guide). Criticism of the ABS Guide has distracted attention from the results of successive RAEs, where the panel for Business and Management has been one of the most selective in its allocation of the highest grades, especially when compared with the neighbouring field of Economics. If the ABS Guide had been used to grade outputs submitted for Business and Management in the RAE 2008 then many more outputs would have received the highest grades, especially in accounting where outputs from journals such as Critical Perspectives on Accounting, which are highly rated in the ABS Guide, appear to have been downgraded by the RAE panel. The alleged bias against accounting in the ABS Guide rests on a particular interpretation of citation impact factors for journals, and a narrow definition of subject fields. Critics of the ABS Guide would be better advised to direct their attention to scrutinizing the results of the REF and considering whether it provides an adequate research ranking for UK business schools. 15% of all full time students in the UK study business and management, including accounting and finance, but only 6.7% of the full time equivalent research active staff submitted in the RAE 2008 were in business and management, or accounting and finance. Research audits are therefore forcing the separation of teaching from research in UK business schools. With an estimated ratio of 71 full time students per research active faculty member in UK business schools, it may be time to consider a more appropriate, inclusive, and economical form of ranking for research in business and management.

If history matters for organization theory, then we need greater reflexivity regarding the epistemological problem of representing the past; otherwise, history might be seen as merely a repository of ready-made data. To facilitate this reflexivity, we set out three epistemological dualisms derived from historical theory to explain the relationship between history and organization theory: (1) in the dualism of explanation, historians are preoccupied with narrative construction, whereas organization theorists subordinate narrative to analysis; (2) in the dualism of evidence, historians use verifiable documentary sources, whereas organization theorists prefer constructed data; and (3) in the dualism of temporality, historians construct their own periodization, whereas organization theorists treat time as constant for chronology. These three dualisms underpin our explication of four alternative research strategies for organizational history: corporate history, consisting of a holistic, objectivist narrative of a corporate entity; analytically structured history, narrating theoretically conceptualized structures and events; serial history, using replicable techniques to analyze repeatable facts; and ethnographic history, reading documentary sources "against the grain." Ultimately, we argue that our epistemological dualisms will enable organization theorists to justify their theoretical stance in relation to a range of strategies in organizational history, including narratives constructed from documentary sources found in organizational archives. Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved.

Organizations remember through narratives and storytelling. The articles in this Special Issue explore the interface between organization studies, memory studies, and historiography. They focus on the practices for organizational remembering. Taken together, the articles explore the similarities and differences between ethnographic and historical methods for studying memory in organizations, which represents a contribution to the historic turn in organization studies.

This Rejoinder responds to criticisms made by Simon Hussain (2011) about the construction and operation of the Association of Business Schools' (ABS) Academic Journal Quality Guide. In this paper the broad purposes of journal lists and guides are outlined before an account is given of the long history and multiple forms of these lists, particularly in the field of Accounting. Having described the main features of different types of journal list, the advantages and benefits of the approach adopted in the compilation of the ABS Journal Quality Guide is outlined. The paper then ends by noting that one of the copy-editing mistakes identified by Dr Hussain has been rectified, but the remaining concerns about the rating of accounting education and accounting history journals reflect the absence of these titles from journal citation reports and international journal lists. Furthermore, the lower rating of Accounting & Finance research in the RAE2008 in comparison with Business & Management Studies research in th...

The ABS list is one of the most widely used journal quality lists available. It is pluralistic and comprehensive, and is widely seen as capturing the consensus in relation to journal ratings. As editors of the ABS list we are concerned at recent calls for a moratorium, or even the abolition of journal quality lists. These calls reinforce the elitist view that the tacit knowledge of where to publish should not be made explicit in lists.

How is it that a collection of working class drifters, sociology graduates, and ex-leftist politicos have ended up teaching in UK business schools? Understanding the predicament of these ‘critters’ helps to explain the ironic contingencies that provide the conditions of possibility for institutionalizing critical management studies (CMS), in particular the historic ‘defeat of the Left’ and the lack of more practical activities for radical management academics. Unlike labour process theory (LPT), CMS has come to terms with its institutional location within business schools and has taken the opportunity provided by the continued expansion of research oriented UK business schools to institutionalize itself as a recognized business school constituency. This has even led to the creation of one or two critically oriented business schools in the UK, where the contradictions of CMS are played out. One such contradiction is that having provided an opening for a wider academic and leftist intellectual community to enter the business school, CMS now finds itself faced with an autonomist critique which insists that the mainstream management curriculum is ‘worthless’ and calls for nothing less than the abolition of business schools. Consideration of this critique provides an opportunity to explore the identity of critters and the cultural performativity of CMS in providing a sign for their disaffiliation from the business school.

Scenarios and counterfactuals are two types of modal narrative. Modal narratives concern themselves with contingency and determinism: with questions of possibility and necessity. While scenarios are future-oriented, focused on what might yet be, counterfactuals are narratives of what might have been. Despite this fundamental temporal difference, consideration of the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of modal narratives as a genre enables us to elucidate some critical issues concerning scenarios as a foresight methodology. In particular, the scenario literature has tended to avoid extended discussion of its implicit assumptions concerning causation, necessity, possibility and contingency. By confronting the modal nature of foresight methodologies more explicitly, the futures community may begin to lay more secure philosophical foundations for their deployment.

PurposeThis paper seeks to identify and define the genre of corporate history within the pervasive historical discourse produced by and about organizations which tells the past of an organization across a multiplicity of texts: published works – commissioned and critical accounts, academic tomes and glossy coffee‐table books – as well as web pages, annual reports and promotional pamphlets.Design/methodology/approachThe approach takes the form of systematic reading of historical narratives for 85 mainly British and US companies from the Fortune Global 500. For these companies, a search was carried out for US printed sources in the British Library and a survey was conducted of historical content in web pages.FindingsFrom extensive reading of the historical discourse, recurrent formal features (medium, authorship, publication, paratext and imagery) and elements of thematic content (narrative, characters, cultural paradigms and business success), which together define the genre of corporate history, have been identified. Such a definition provides competence in the reading of historical narratives of organizations and raises questions regarding the role of history in organizational identity, memory and communication. In conclusion it is argued that the interpretation of corporate history cannot be reduced to its promotional function for organizations.Research limitations/implicationsThe list of the formal features and thematic content of corporate history detailed here is by no means exhaustive. They are not variables, but signs, which, in various combinations, compose the narrative and signify the genre.Practical implicationsIt seems likely that coffee‐table books will increasingly replace academic commissioned histories, with consultants professionalizing the discourse and formalizing the genre of corporate history.Originality/valueThe genre of corporate history has hitherto been neglected in organization theory, where the linguistic turn has led to a preoccupation with talk as text. The use of genre to analyse corporate history represents a textual turn to literary organizational texts as text.

Organizations are increasingly being called to account for their history. In particular, German and non-German companies have been called to account for their relations with the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. Organizations are not only accountable for past activity, but also for previous, often misleading, historical accounts of their behaviour. Thus we are interested in how an organization deals with historical accounts of its past, and how this reflects its culture. Therefore we draw upon concepts from organizational culture studies, and specifically Martin's three perspectives of culture as integration, differentiation, and fragmentation. We take the illustrative case of Bertelsmann, the German publishing company. Revelations of its record under the Nazis, when it published anti-semitic literature, were brought to light by Hersch Fischler in 1998, when Bertelsmann was in the process of taking over Random House. These revelations jarred with the company's image of corporate social responsibility and undermined the company legend, which alleged that it had an impeccable record, and had even been closed down for opposing the Nazis. The Bertelsmann case highlights the dilemmas involved in organizations invoking their past. Debate over the Holocaust has highlighted the dilemmas of truth and relativism in representations of history. The Bertelsmann case highlights similar dilemmas for organizational culture perspectives.

Debates about the role of capitalist corporations depend ultimately on their response to the enduring question of ‘who controls the large modern corporation’. This article aims to identify various competing schools of thought that can be classified as ‘managerialist’ and ‘anti-managerialist’, ‘mainstream’ and ‘radical’, which have emerged over the course of the last 70 years, moving on to consider how each has impacted on the discipline of business history. The paper utilizes a two-by-two matrix that divides theories along two dimensions to set out four alternative perspectives. Along the horizontal dimension, anti-managerialism is opposed to managerialism; along the vertical dimension, mainstream and radical perspectives are opposed. The article then assesses the extent to which these conflicting perspectives have influenced the work of business historians, from Chandler's earliest work through to more recent thinking on the links between corporate governance, accountability and broader market forces. Em...

The successful management of strategic change requires an understanding of which moves are possible in specific contexts, and thus of how specific contexts variously require, forbid, or permit certain organizational or policy actions. Appreciation of such modal issues of necessity and possibility thus becomes essential in understanding organizational and technological dynamics. This paper introduces the concept of modal narratives: forms of analytically structured narrative that explore questions of necessity, possibility and contingency. After a brief review of two common types of modal narrative—counterfactuals and scenarios— the potential of a third form is suggested: the superfactual. An extended example of a superfactual is provided in the Project Hindsight case, and the implications for strategic action are discussed.

The debate over ownership and control of corporations is one of the most enduring in social science. It is a debate that continues to influence, and is informed by accounting and accountability research as well as labor process theory, and it is a debate that is vital for understanding the relation between accounting and the labor process. This paper offers a roadmap for locating alternative perspectives concerning ownership and control. First, ‘mainstream anti-managerialism’ maintains that corporations remain answerable to their owners. Second, ‘mainstream managerialism’ argues that corporations are one form of organization and that organizations in general are shaped by inter-organizational factors. Third, ‘radical managerialism’ views corporations as self-perpetuating bureaucracies. Finally ‘Marxist anti-managerialism’ views corporations as constrained by the interests of an identifiable capitalist class.

We outline the prospects for Management & Organizational History in the form of a 10-point agenda identifying issues that we envisage being addressed in the journal. 1.The 'Historic Turn' in Organization Theory - calls for a more historical orientation in management and organization theory. 2. Historical Methods and Styles of Writing - alternative methods and diverse styles of writing appropriate for studying organizations historically. 3.The Philosophy of History and Historical Theorists - the relevance for management and organization theory of philosophers of history such as Michel Foucault and Hayden White. 4. Corporate Culture and Social Memory - the historical dimension of culture and memory in organizations. 5. Organizational History - the emergence of a distinctive field of research. 6. Business History and Theory - the engagement between business history and organization theory. 7. Business Ethics in History - the meaning and ethics of past business behaviour. 8. Metanarratives of Corporate Capitalism - historiographical debate concerning the rise of capitalism and the modern corporation. 9. Management History and Management Education - the link between the history of management thought and the teaching of management and organization theory. 10. Public History - the relation between business schools and the increasing public interest in history.

The public availability of detailed data from the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise in the UK allows an analysis of the publications cited in submissions to the Business and Management panel. Eighty per cent of the 9,942 publications submitted were journal articles. Submissions to the RAE can be scored in terms of the number of citations they make to journals that appear on various lists, such as the Financial Times list. The concentration of articles in a minority of journals, with 50% of all citations to just 126 journals, means that a core list of business and management journals can be compiled. The core list presented contains 562 journals out of the 1582 journal titles that were cited in Business and Management submissions. It includes all journals with more than two citations overall at least one citation in a 5*, 5 or 4 rated submission. It also includes all journals cited in the RAE from Starbuck’s ranked lists of journals and the Financial Times list.

In Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault describes how: `From the seventeenth century to the introduction, at the beginning of the nineteenth, of the Lancaster method, the complex clockwork of the mutual improvement school was built up cog by cog' (emphasis added). Foucault's genealogical explanation of how the mutual improvement school became a `machine for learning' is one of the main examples upon which his thesis of `disciplinary power' is built. However, Foucault's methodology, presenting a `genealogy' of the `essential techniques' on which disciplinary institutions are built, rather than to `write the history' of those institutions, results in relatively little case evidence being presented on key organizations cited in empirical support of his thesis. For example, by suggesting that the Lancaster Method represents the logical conclusion to the genealogy of mutual improvement techniques, he fails to offer any formal case evidence of Lancasterian policies and practices. This article therefore seeks to `research Foucault's research' by uncovering the distinctive organizational features of this paradigm `disciplinary institution', the Lancaster Method. We develop a case analysis of the educational philosophies of Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838) and explain how these were realized in the pedagogy and administration of his `monitorial' (or `British') schools. In so doing, we seek to deepen our understanding of `the architecture, anatomy, mechanics [and] economy of the disciplinary body'.

There is an increasing call for an historical perspective in organization studies. Clegg, Jacques and Burrell in particular combine this call with a Foucauldian reformulation of organization studies. But Foucauldians in organization studies have largely ignored the criticisms of Foucault from historians. We rehearse six main criticisms of Foucault from historians: (1) impenetrable style; (2) avoidance of narrative; (3) ambivalence to truth; (4) errors in historical facts; (5) neglect of relevant historiography; and (6) questionable historical explanations. We then apply these criticisms to the work of Clegg, Jacques, and Burrell. Clegg makes serious historical errors, and neglects criticisms of labour process historiography. The historical sources and historiography cited by Jacques are insufficient. Burrell's interpretation of the connection between modernity and the Holocaust is questionable in the light of recent historiography. We conclude that so far, the invocation of Foucault has exacerbated the problematic treatment of history in organization studies.

(2000). Marxist Political Economy, Revolutionary Politics, and Labor Process Theory. International Studies of Management & Organization: Vol. 30, The Labor Process Debate, pp. 85-111.

The concept of culture promised to make organization studies more historical and to provide theoretical relevance for business history. This promise has not been fulfilled. The conventions at various levels of organizational culture studies prevent them from becoming more historical, and the conventions of business history make it difficult to engage with the concept of culture. Corporate culturism imposes a narrative structure that privileges the role of founders in history. Similarly, corporate sponsorship reinforces the tendency for business historians to endorse the unity and continuity of corporate cultures. The influence of economics in business history reduces culture to a residual variable and subordinates narrative to economic models. Organizational symbolists are suspicious of narrative, which they associate with founder-centred corporate culturism. Instead, ethnographies emphasize verisimilitude and the subjective experience of the author at the expense of verifiable historical narratives. Business historians adopt an objective stance that allows them to write definitive company histories, but makes it difficult to engage with the subjectivism and relativism of organizational symbolism or the scepticism of post-modernism. Unlike organizational culture studies, post-modernism in history is identified with a return to narrative. A serious engagement with organizational culture studies might engender the much-needed critical reflex in business history. We use the rare examples of historical deconstruction in organizational culture studies (Boje 1995) and of deconstruction in business history (Church 1996) to highlight the differences between the two discourses. We argue that a more historical approach in organizational culture studies and a more reflexive engagement with the concept of culture in business history would facilitate the deconstruction of founder-centred narratives of corporate culture.

This case study re-examines the history of Cadbury, the British-based chocolate confectionery manufacturer, to give an insight into the relationship between strategies of diversification, adoption of a multidivisional structure, and culture in relation to labour management. During the 1960s Cadbury undertook diversification, divisionalization and merger, all of which were affected by, and had an effect upon the Cadbury culture developed at the Bournville factory in Birmingham, England. Contemporaneous documentary evidence, especially the Cadbury board minutes, are used to question the prevalent view, mostly based on retrospective interviews with managers, that cultural change was the outcome of intended management strategies. Instead it is argued that the dilution of the Cadbury culture was the unintended consequence of diversification and divisionalization rather than a conscious abandonment on the part of a new generation of Cadbury directors or the influence of Schweppes after the merger with Cadbury.

Stephen Procter, John Hassard and Michael Rowlinson investigate the introduction of cellular manufacturing in two units of a large British engineering group. They explore the reasons for its introduction – in both cases it was the cumbersome, functionally-based system of production that precluded quick and easy reaction to changes in conditions – and the effects such as the flattening of the organisational structure and the new role of the cell leader. A comparison of the two companies shows the difficulties involved in trying to enhance discretion by means of a process that was explicitly low-trust in nature. In one case an open and participative style was used which appeared to meet with success. In the second case, management adopted a closed and uncommunicative style which induced indifference and, at worst, resistance. Stephen Procter and Michael Rowlinson are Lecturers in the School of Management and Finance at the University of Nottingham, and John Hassard is Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Keele.

In focusing on the relationship between labour process theory and Marxist economics the authors highlight as problematic labour process theorists' abandonment of the labour theory of value and acceptance of managerialism in a way which conflates labour process theory with organisation theory. The similarity in the political rhetoric of the deskilling thesis and the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is brought out, and it is argued neither provides an adequate theoretical basis for revolutionary politics. The challenge for labour process theory is to show the connection between the subordination of labour and capitalist property rights and how those property rights can be dismantled.

This paper offers a defence of Atkinson's model of the flexible firm. It takes issue with two arguments against it: that the model needs to be understood at a political level, as part of a wider `post-industrial' vision; and that the observed increase in flexibility offers the model no support because of its `non-strategic' nature. On the first of these it is argued that flexibility operates on a different level from flexible specialisation and other varieties of `post-industrialism' and that to consider them together confuses rather than illuminates the debate. On the second, it is argued that the criticism relies on an unnecessarily restrictive view of strategy. Rather than being regarded as `plans', strategies should be regarded as `patterns' in decision-making. On the basis of this alternative conception the paper suggests ways in which the flexible firm model might be recast.

The relationships between computer integrated manufacturing (CIM), corporate strategy and organization are assessed, and various periodizations for analysing the process of innovation are considered. The periodization selected consists of concept, translation, commissioning and operation, and this is then used to structure a case study, based on in-depth interviews, of the introduction of CIM in a medium sized UK manufacturer of electrical components for the automotive industry.

SUMMARY This paper discusses the use of performance related pay (PRP) as a means of control over the relationship between effort and reward. Taking a critical perspective, it describes how the implementation of PRP in a UK-based electronics company has been used as a device to remove trade union influence in wage-setting arrangements and to effect changes in employee behaviour. The opinions of supervisors, line managers, personnel managers and shop-floor staff are discussed and the implications for management control are assessed. The paper concludes that from management's perspective the PRP system appears to have been a success, for it has in some cases ‘commercialized’ the relationship between effort and reward, and has pre-empted expressions of employee resistance.

Stephen Procter, Louise McArdle, Michael Rowlinson, Paul Forrester and John Hassard draw on the evidence of a longitudinal case study of a large electronics company to discuss the problems arising from the introduction and operation of a performance related pay system. These included resource constraints, difficulties in criteria selection, and subjectivity. Underlying these problems was the workforce's lack of confidence in the principle as well as the appication of the system. the authors conclude that companies face great difficulty in using such systems to effect cultural change: the necessary culture may already have to exist for such pay systems to work. Stephen Procter, Paul Forrester and John Hassard, respectively, are lecturers and Professor in the School of Management and Economics at the University of Keele, Louise McArdle is in the Department of Organisation Studies at the University of Central Lancashire, and Michael Rowlinson is in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Southampton.

The concept of culture promised to make organization studies more historical. This promise has not been fulfilled. Possible reasons for the failure to integrate business history and organization studies are explored and a synthesis developed, using the historical concept of invented tradition in conjunction with the social cognition biases identified by organizational culture. The major part of the article then demonstrates how Cadbury, a British confectionery company well known for its Quaker traditions, invented its corporate culture by attributing significance to the Quaker beliefs of the Cadbury family retrospectively. A history is reconstructed, mainly from published sources, to demonstrate how the histories constructed by the firm, including a centenary celebration in 1931, were part of the process of giving meaning to the firm's labor-management institutions.

Le tournant culturel en histoire des entreprisesLes historiens des entreprises s’interessent de plus en plus a la notion de culture. Certains, dont P. Fridenson par exemple, ont demontre la valeur d’une ouverture accrue de la profession vers d’autres champs d’etudes tels que l’histoire culturelle et les etudes memorielles qui en sont issues. L’histoire des entreprises n’a eu que peu de difficultes a s’approprier les analyses portant sur les industries de la culture et sur la culture de la consommation. Elle reconnait desormais aussi la richesse des representations culturelles du monde de l’entreprise et des affaires en art et en litterature. Cependant, et c’est la notre argument, la culture du consensus qui regne au sein de la profession continue de limiter la prise en compte des enjeux des « guerres culturelles » qui occupent bon nombre de chercheurs en culture organisationnelle dans les ecoles de commerce ainsi que les historiens specialistes de theorie culturelle. Les etudes critiques portant sur la culture dans les organisations se mefient des recits centres sur les fondateurs que tous les historiens d’entreprise, a quelques exceptions pres, reproduisent volontiers de toutes pieces afin d’expliciter la culture qui regne au sein de l’entreprise qu’ils etudient. Plus largement, la theorie culturelle conteste la logique de l’objectivite qui prevaut en histoire des entreprises en soulevant la possibilite de l’existence d’une inquietante « fragilite epistemologique ». Et dans la mesure ou les historiens des entreprises se seraient effectivement eloignes de la performance economique pour s’interesser aux questions de genre, de race et de sexe, ils ne peuvent echapper aux « guerres culturelles » associees au « multiculturalisme » qui s’impose dans toute analyse des relations qui lient historiquement le monde de l’entreprise et des affaires a l’esclavage, au racisme ou aux inegalites. En terminant notre article sur l’utilisation par Alan McKinlay des caricatures dessinees par un employe en marge des registres de la Bank of Scotland, dans son analyse de l’emergence de la notion de carriere moderne chez les banquiers ecossais du debut du XXe siecle, nous souhaitons illustrer la maniere dont une etude alimentee par la theorie culturelle peut diverger de l’histoire des entreprises conventionnelle tout en continuant de se fonder sur les memes sources documentaires.

(1988). The Early Application of Scientific Management by Cadbury. Business History: Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 377-395.